


A Rose Bloomed: Blue As

by hungrytiger11 (hungrytiger)



Series: A Rose Bloomed [5]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Best Friends, Childhood, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, Gen, Kid Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-07-07
Updated: 2009-07-07
Packaged: 2017-10-07 11:55:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,343
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/64927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hungrytiger/pseuds/hungrytiger11
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Friendship is tricky. It is as much about the secrets we share as the secrets we keep.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Rose Bloomed: Blue As

**Author's Note:**

> This takes place several years after the previous chapter, so the rookie nine are all seven-eight, as opposed to four-five.

Ino traced the delicate edges carefully with the tip of her finger, and smiled to herself. These were beautiful, like cracked pieces of the sky- well, the sky as it normally was, not this yucky, grey one. Wait till she showed Daddy! Would it be possible though, to get them down? Before she could decide one way or the other, the wind carried the sound of voices up.

Getting a firm grip on the branch above her, Ino swung around to see who was coming. Far below her tree, she could make out two dark-headed boys. One had a long scarf whipping behind him in the wind, and the other's hair sprouted out the top of his head in an all-to-familiar riot of spikes. Ino giggled thinking from this distance, it looked like Shikamaru had a pineapple on top of his head, more than anything else. He would not be best pleased to know that!

Still though, what were those two doing here? True, she was, just barely, on Nara land, but, while the girls had had to stay late for kunoichi arts class, the boys had been dismissed mid-day. Come to think of it, both Chouji-kun and Shika had been missing even before that. Ino scowled thinking it was likely they'd been off skipping with that dog-boy Inuzaka-san, and Uzumaki-kun. She didn't know the Inuzaka clan member all that well; he was in different classes than Ino, but Uzumaki-kun always ended up with the same teacher as she and Shikamaru, much to her daddy's chagrin. So Shika really should have known better! She actually wasn't quite sure what Daddy disliked about the blonde so much, but he was loud and crude and if you stood too close to him at any given point, you were likely to end up the butt of some joke, so it wasn't hard to see why people mightn't like Uzumaki-kun. She'd learned that one the hard way, when her hair had ended up blue for a week. At least Chouji-kun had been sympathetic; Shikamaru'd found it particularly funny and she'd had a sneaking suspicion that Uzumaki-kun had not come up with the prank on his own.

Thinking about the incident still made her steamed- and embarrassed. Shaking her head, and raising her arm, she smiled a little. It had been over a year ago since then after all, and Uzumaki-kun,_ and,_ Shikamaru, _and_ Chouji-kun _and_ even Inuzaka-san had all been made to apologize to not only her, but also her daddy. Anyone brave enough to face Daddy deserved to be forgiven. Besides, this was too special not to show somebody.

"Hey," she called out, flagging down the duo that had become annoyingly inseparable. It made her a little envious that two people could be such good friends, and sometimes, very rarely, she might even admit it hurt a little. She'd known Shika first after all. Of course, Ino was friends with lots of people, and she was perfectly capable of doing brilliant things on her own too, so it didn't matter that she wasn't inseparable from someone. But brilliant or not on her own, she glowed a little at the thought of being able to share this with someone. She could just picture it now- Chouji-kun'd look at her with admiration, and Shikamaru would smile that one real smile he hardly ever used, and then he'd come up with some plan to get the nest down and they'd go show Yoshino-san who'd give her a hug and a snack and tell her how much she missed having Ino around the house. Maybe she'd even get to spend the night because Yoshino missed her so much. It happened sometimes. And then she'd get to borrow Shikamaru's stuffed deer to sleep with and they'd all three- Shikamaru, Ino, and Deer-chan- get to put out blankets under Shika's window and fall asleep watching the moon. It was one of her earliest and best memories, falling asleep that way, and when they woke the first thing they'd see was a sky as blue as the robin eggs she was going to show the two boys.

That is, if they'd look up.

"HEEEEY!" She called louder this time, so the sound wasn't swallowed by wind and distance. The shout caused them to stop and look around. She bet Shikamaru was squinting his eyes and muttering "troublesome" while doing it too!

"Up, here! I'm up here!"

Searching eyes found her, and Chouji-kun started yelling up at her, even while moving closer to her tree. It took her a minute to make out what he was saying with the wind blowing the leaves all about.

"Ino! How'd you get up there?"

Ino scrambled down the branches, watching as they approached her tree.

"I climbed of course-duh!"

"We got that. What Chouji means is how did you get past all the thorns?" Shikamaru asked once they were close enough not to be yelling. He hated yelling; thought it took too much energy he'd told her once.

"What thorns?"

Shikamaru rolled her eyes at her. "Those thorns. All the rose bushes under the tree. What'd you do? Forget about them? Or are you stuck?"

Ino glanced back down and blushed. Oh. Those thorns. In summer, they bloomed and the herds of deer thought they were quite the delicacy, but without the colorful blooms they did tend to escape her mind once she was past them.

"I jumped," she muttered.

Chouji-kun's eyes widened. "Ino-chan, you couldn't have jumped past all those. Did you use charka? Kaname-sensei said we weren't to use any charka outside of school!"

She scowled, and felt the blush deepen. "Like you two are ones to talk! I know you skipped class again today!"

Chouji-kun at least had the grace to blush too, his cheeks turning pink and his swirls turning an even darker, almost a purple shade. Shikamaru however looked unimpressed with the unspoken threat. He always seemed to know when she was bluffing. She loved his mother very much, but wouldn't stick an angry Yoshino-san on anyone!

"Ino," he said, "Skipping's not going to hurt anything. What if you'd been hurt doing that?"

"But I'm not," Ino pouted. "Come up! I've got something to show you!"  
"How?" Chouji-kun questioned, and Ino flashed him a mischievous grin before scrambling back up the branches.

"Jump."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

Shikamaru's body whirled past him, just as Ino-chan's legs disappeared from view. Chouji was never quite sure how either of his friends managed to pick up these sorts of things so quickly. He thought about maybe just waiting them out, or perhaps trying to kick the thorns out the way, when he looked up to see Shikamaru waiting with his hand out-reached. Screwing up his eyes shut, he concentrated on remembering what Kaname-sensei said and felt the heat of charka building up in his legs. Taking a deep breathe before his courage left him, he took off towards the tree with a running jump, and when he'd opened his eyes, he'd landed with a thump, a full two branches higher than Shikamaru.

"All right there, Chouji?" he asked in that deeply ironic tone he sometimes used, and Chouji knew that his best friend was amused, and a little frustrated, Chouji had underrated his own skills yet again.

"Yeah," Chouji replied, rubbing the back of his head. "Let's go!"

Ino-chan was far above them, a small and acrobatic blur. They had to make their way up following more the sounds of her rustling and the falling leaves rather than watching which way she was going. Looking at her go so gracefully, it was hard to imagine she was named after a boar- till you ran up against her pigheadedness Shikamaru said.

By the time they'd caught up with her, they were all three far, far higher than Chouji had ever been before, even counting the times his dad had carried him over rooftops when the two of them were in a hurry. It would be just like Ino-chan, Chouji reflected, to choose one of the tallest trees around. This had to be even higher than the city gates!

Ino-chan was out on the branch, with one hand gripping an overhanging limb for balance as she knelt over something Chouji couldn't see. This was probably what she'd wanted to show them, but whether it was something cool or disgusting, was hard to say. Her hair was blowing about too much to see her face. Shikamaru jerked his chin, gesturing for Chouji to go on head while he followed up after. Grabbing the next branch up, Chouji was somewhat reassured that it was too thick to fit entirely in his grip. It would hold all their weight for sure then.

Closer now, he could see the blonde was gazing at something small and twiggy, her free hand hovering just to the side of whatever-it -was, ghosting the edges but not out-right touching. It wasn't until he was nearly on top of her, he could make out a glimpse of color and finally make sense of what he was looking at- robins' egg shells, delicately shaped, boldly colored and unbelievably small. Chouji smiled, looking at them and then back up at little Ino-chan. He felt like he had just swallowed a secret.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

Shikamaru watched Chouji haul himself up between two branches and out of sight. Huffing a little, he glanced at the form of Ino, partially obscured by wavering leafs. Dad said Mom was a frustrating woman, and no doubt about it, she was. It was lucky he knew Ino would never do something so… straight-laced and prattish as telling on him and Chouji. School was boring beyond belief, but if his mom found out he'd skipped -again- she would be a holy terror and his bum might never be the same. But still, no matter what Mom could do to him or what she had done (and might still do) to Dad, no way could anybody hold a candle to the amount of trouble Ino was.

What had she been doing way out in their deer fields in the first place, let alone way up here on her own? With weather like this, not even he wanted to be outside, cloud-gazing or not.

Bark scrapped against his knees and palms as he followed Chouji up. When he lifted his head, he saw his two friends had stopped moving and were both staring at something he couldn't see.

He started towards them, and began deliberately making loud rustling noises when it became clear Chouji might not move for him. That still didn't catch his friend's attention, and he wondered if the rustling couldn't be heard over the whistling air. But then Ino looked up at him, and carefully maneuvered around what they were looking at in order to face him, pulling Chouji into her original position. Watching her step onto a different branch slightly above their own made him a little nervous. The bough she stepped onto was barely as wide as one of Ino's feet, and buckled ever so slightly with her weight.

Still, he saddled up behind Chouji and peered around to take a look at what Ino had to share with them.

Down, nestled in against two smaller limbs, was a nest barely the size of Ino's hand. That was pretty impressively small really, considering Ino was the smallest student in their class. Inside the nest were broken robins' eggs. They'd probably been there a long time- since spring, and it was fall now. But somehow, no storm had dislodged them. They were so small and so blue just like-

"They are the same color as your eyes, Ino-chan!" Chouji breathed. Ino blushed and flashed him a pleased smile- not one of her fake I'm-glad-you-are-pleased-with-me smiles she was always giving the teachers or her dad, but a real one, small and showing just the barest hint of teeth.

Even from his vantage point over Chouji's shoulder, he could see his friend's cheeks redden, and he felt inexplicably annoyed.

"Why are you whispering?"

The Akimichi tried to angle his head around to see his friend, but couldn't quite make it.   
"Well, I dunno…" he replied, "It just… seems special, doesn't it?"

"That's troublesome," he muttered, wishing vaguely Chouji was not there, so then no one else would notice the color, and it could be a secret thought, one he could pretend wasn't there. But, it was pretty special, he supposed. He was about to say so when a fistful of leaves came flying at his face. Spitting out a stray leaf, he looked over at the girl directly across from him.

"Don't listen to him, Chouji-kun," Ino said the words lightly, pretending to tease, but her eyes had a hard, broken-glass look that reminded him of the first day he'd met her. He was about to apologize when she went on, "He's just too dumb to see how special this is."

The words he'd been about to say stuck in his mouth, and his eyes narrowed.

"I'm dumb? That stupid nest isn't worth breaking your neck over."

"No one's going to get a broken neck," Ino bit out, a little more hurt this time. "Quit saying things like that, Shikamaru. You're gonna scare Chouji-kun."

Chouji bristled at that. "Hey! I'm not scared! I can get up here just as well as you or Shikamaru can!"

Before anyone could reply to that, the branch swayed in a sudden gust of wind, pitching Shikamaru forward with a yelp. As he stumbled, he knocked Chouji off to the side, who put one foot down through leafs into empty air below and went crashing to his knees. But it was Ino's sudden gasp, just barely audible over the wind, that brought both boys' horrified gazes up. Short as she was, she'd been unable to keep her grip when the branch she stood on groaned and rocked to the side. For one terrifying moment it looked like she was going to fall. Her back hit the branch below, knocking the air out of her, before sliding off the side. Her arms flailed out, twisting to try and gasp the limb. It was too thick to get a firm grasp around, and she scrapped against the bark, trying to pull herself right ways up, to get on top of the branch instead of hanging on from below.

Both boys flung out their arms, but Ino ignored their too-short reaches. Shikamaru managed to scoot himself up enough to grab at her back, but it was mostly unneeded by that time, as she hauled herself up and around. Pulling himself up to a sitting position, he hugged her tightly, her back to his chest. They stayed like that for an instant, before the Yamanaka scooted herself around to face the two boys.

"Well, that was exciting, wasn't it?" she said in a strangely high voice. "But it was worth it to see-"

And then she stopped, staring at him.

"It's ruined," she whispered, reaching out and picking bits of twig and chips of eggshell off his chest. Whipping his head back, Shikamaru saw, he'd smashed the nest. He'd probably missed it in the initial fall, but had wrecked it when inching his way toward Ino.

"You ruined it."

Shikamaru jerked his head back around. Well, sure he'd-! But then she'd been-!

"Stupid! How can you be thinking about that?"

His only answer was her, pushing her hands off from his chest, as both of his friends continued to stare at him. There might even, a part of him was troubled to see, have been tears starting. But that was ridiculous; Ino didn't cry. Stupid, stupid, stupid! Didn't she understand?

"I was trying to save you, you stupid girl! What would have happened if you'd been blown off this?"

Blue eyes hardened, and Ino struggled to get into a standing position, completely ignoring the hand he'd automatically thrust out to help her.

"I was fine! I AM fine! And I'm not some stupid girl! I don't need to be saved; I can do it on my own!"

Shikamaru suddenly found he was fighting back tears of his own, and all that just made him madder.

"Are to stupid; it was dumb to even come up here in the first place," he ground out.

Ino gripped the branch above tighter and reached out to step over him.

"Then why did you, huh?" At least she was losing her battle not to cry; it felt strangely good to see he was hurting her right back, after all her ungratefulness and _stupidity_.

"To keep you from getting hurt! You're so troublesome, I knew you would get hurt, but I thought you'd fall into the thorns. Even you should have enough sense not to climb this high – but no-o! Little Miss Perfect Ino-hime's too dumb to even realize not to that!"

"Shut up, shut up, shut up!" Ino stopped moving towards the way back down, and looking at her shaking back, Shikamaru realized she was out-and-out, full-on sobbing. And that wasn't as good of a realization as it had been a second ago. This was tough-as-nails, best-grades-in-the-class Ino, who hardly ever cried let alone sobbed, Ino, who hadn't cried when she'd been stabbed in the arm one kunai practice, or when his mother had lost them that time at the market, or when her father had announced he was marrying his latest store clerk, or even two weeks later when the store clerk broke it off, and not even when Naruto'd pulled off that prank he'd suggested and Ino's long hair had ended up blue. Ino never cried except when someone let her down, and up till now the only person on that list was her father. She'd only cried those times that he'd left her. Shikamaru had always felt that fact had secretly given him license to hate Yamanaka-san, but now Ino was crying, sobbing, because of him.

Chouji pulled himself up and moved towards the distraught girl, being careful even then to keep a tight grip, in case the wind should come up again.

"Ino?"

"Its just-t - I was go-o-ing t-to ask- help- g-g-getting it dow-n-n - and-and-and Daddy was going- and Yoshino-sa-a-an - di-inn-er." They were just able to catch bits and pieces between each gulping sob, and Shikamaru felt shame twisting down through him. "-So-o pretty -and-and- stay the-e night- Dee-e-er-ch-chan-n- I-I-I…"

Ino gulped down air, and her words dissolved into a quiet murmur as she worked to get her breathing under control. Chouji, looking singularly uncomfortable, patted her back mechanically and offered, " Um, do you want to stay the night, um, at my house, Ino-chan?"

Shikamaru sighed, picked the last of any twigs off his vest, and stood up. It was hard to be positive, but he thought he had an idea of what she'd been trying to say. He put his chin down on her shoulder and muttered, "You can tell my mom if you want. I won't get made at you."

Ino shook her head back and forth, her loose hair brushing against his cheek.

"No, you don't want to spend the night at Chouji's, or no, you won't tell my mom?"

Ino swallowed, "Both."

Ino brought up her hands so that they rested on the boys' arms and they stood there for a moment, locked in a three-way hug, broken only when Ino let out a dry laugh.

"That was sort of scary, wasn't it?" she asked.  
"Humph. Troublesome, more like," Shikamaru replied, looking away, back towards where she had nearly fallen.

"But the nest was neat, Ino-chan," Chouji added. Shikamaru smiled at that.

"Yeah," he agreed. "It was."

One by one they slid back down the branch, and, as Shikamaru went to follow the others' descent, he could already hear Chouji waxing lyrical on the topic of hot tea and dangos. Grabbing ahold of the branch, he wondered how annoyed his mom would be at his inviting unannounced guests over. Not too mad, he decided. It was just Ino and Chouji after all, and food sounded good…

 

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End file.
